Generosity & Contentment

Gospel Centered Discipleship has posted one of my articles on their site today.  You might want to click over and give it a read.

The danger of wealth has been a prominent theme in the teaching of several pastors in recent years. John Piper’s chapter on money in Desiring God has shaped me and many others to a great degree. More recently, authors David Platt and Francis Chan have championed a similar message with their books Radical and Crazy Love.

Their message has met considerable resistance with counter warnings against embracing a “poverty theology.” Should we not rejoice in what God has given? Shouldn’t we want to take care of our families and provide for them? Shouldn’t pastors be paid well so their wives don’t have to work and they are not continually stressed out with financial pressure?

I’m afraid the framing of this discussion leads us to ask the wrong questions. Like the junior high boy who wonders “how far is too far” with his girlfriend, we are quickly caught up in questions about how rich is too rich, how poor is too poor, and the like. Where is the line? Do I feel guilty for having too much? Do the kids have enough? What does “enough” even mean? Should I feel guilty about not giving as much as so-and-so? If I give more, does that mean I am more spiritual? The hamster wheel of comparison, propelled by our spring-loaded legalism, keeps spinning unto exhaustion. We are all tempted to be prideful about what we give or feel guilty about what we don’t. Neither response befits the gospel, which crushes pride and erases guilt.

Still, the question remains: how should we handle money?

Read the rest.

Onetime top California football prospect Brian Banks exonerated of kidnap-rape conviction

The NY Daily News:

The kidnap-rape conviction of a once-promising prep football star was dismissed Thursday following a recantation by his accuser.

Brian Banks collapsed in sobs on the counsel table during a court hearing where a prosecutor quickly conceded the decade-old case and moved for the dismissal.

In the summer of 2002, Banks’ future looked bright: He was a 17-year-old high school football star being heavily recruited by a number of colleges. But in a single day that changed with the accusations of kidnapping and rape by a female student.

He maintained there was no rape and their sexual contact was consensual, but his lawyer urged him to plead no contest rather than risk a sentence of 41 years to life in prison if convicted. He followed the advice and went to prison for six years, shattering his dreams of gridiron glory.

Lawyers for the California Innocence Project were prepared Thursday to argue he should be exonerated.

In a strange turn of events, the woman who accused him a decade ago friended him on Facebook when he got out of prison. Wanetta Gibson explained she wanted to “let bygones be bygones.”

According to documents in the case, she met with Banks and said she had lied; there had been was no kidnap and no rape and she offered to help him clear his record.

But she subsequently refused to repeat the story to prosecutors because she feared she would have to return a $1.5 million payment from a civil suit brought by her mother against Long Beach schools.

She was quoted as telling Banks: “I will go through with helping you but it’s like at the same time all that money they gave us, I mean gave me, I don’t want to have to pay it back.”

Justin Brooks, a lawyer who heads the innocence project, said that Banks has remained on probation, under electronic monitoring, has had to register as a sex offender and has had trouble getting a job.

He said Banks continues to train for what he hopes will be a future chance at a football career.

MARANATHA.

Does The Bible Say Anything About What Motivates #OWS?

Interesting post here from Kevin DeYoung.

"Margin Call" and the Banality of Evil

Writing for ThinkChristian.net, Josh Larsen, reviews the movie Margin Call.  He viewed the movie as a failure but in the midst of his review had this poignant quote that may speak to all the #OWS mania, the recession of 2008, and other challenges or atrocities we face.

It dawned on me after the movie was over, however, that although the dullness of “Margin Call” was an artistic failure, it may have been thematically appropriate. In its very triteness, the film suggests how the Great Recession is yet another example of what Hannah Arendt termed the “banality of evil.” 

Arendt’s 1963 thesis held that many of the atrocities committed throughout history, particularly those of the Holocaust, have not been the deeds of a single sociopath. Rather, catastrophic evil requires an acceptance by ordinary people in order to have full impact. Evil, then, isn’t always the work of a dramatic villain. It’s often unremarkable, relying on those who look the other way or fail to acknowledge their complicity in the awfulness at hand. 

We’re starting to see this now in the wake of 2008. It wasn’t only the investment firms who knowingly sold worthless financial packages; it wasn’t only the banks who signed off on risky home loans; it wasn’t only the federal government’s failure to regulate Wall Street. It was also you and I coveting a lifestyle that perhaps we couldn’t – or shouldn’t – afford. Homes, yes, but also cars, clothes and whatever else it is that we put on those ubiquitous credit cards.

Read the rest.

A Good Reflection on #OWS

From the Mockingbird Blog...

They also shared this funny cartoon from Calvin and Hobbes.  (Click image to see larger)

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The Extreme Danger of Wealth

Today in our staff meeting our Admin Pastor told us a brief version of the story of Jack Whittaker, a West Virginia man who won the biggest Powerball jackpot of all time. If you want a sobering read that will remind you that 1 Tim. 6:6-10 is about as true as it gets, read this article. It was a great reminder for my soul.

1 Timothy 6:6-10:

6 Now there is great gain in godliness with contentment, 7 for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. 8 But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. 9 But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.

Greed - Trapped By Allurement

Great illustration.



(HT: Joe Thorn)

Capitalism: A Love Story - A Response

Russell Moore, in his typically thoughtful way, responds to Michael Moore's new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story (watch a trailer at that link). He writes:

What amazes me is not that Michael Moore doesn’t like capitalism. It’s that he’s trying to make money off of his denunciation of capitalism, and using advertising to try to do so. It’s almost as though the filmmaker is winking at us, kind of like the Borat character, bilking us for our cash and laughing at our gullibility for giving it to him.

He continues:

Yes, Michael Moore is a hypocrite. But aren’t we all. And shouldn’t his hypocrisy remind us to take up the plank in our own eye, and start giving away some money, some stuff, from our homes and, more importantly, from our affections.

This is, as the Scriptures repeatedly emphasize, not a simple thing to do. And the Bible nowhere calls us to a kind of mechanistic legalism to put a hedge around the temptation of Mammonism. But it’s awfully hard to see our captivity to wealth when the poorest among us is richer, by world standards, than the rich young ruler would have been, richer than Nebuchadnezzar in all his glory.

American Christians are starting to awaken somewhat to what our fat affluence has done to our supposedly counter-cultural gospel. One can only imagine that, as we speak, some evangelical trinket-maker is designing wall decorations that say “Money is the root of all kinds of evil” to sell to us, as “reminders.”

I hope I’m able to see a love of Mammon more and more clearly in my own life, and not just in the other Moore’s situation. The issue isn’t captitalism vs. socialism, and it certainly isn’t Michael Moore’s hypocritical antics.

After all, a “serve two masters” hypocrisy is much worse when one of those masters is supposed to be Jesus.